Understanding the role of thermal energy storage on district cooling performance

The inherent change in temperature during the day and extreme weather events make it costly and challenging to meet our cooling needs. District cooling technology make it possible to reduce our energy consumption while simultaneously improving the robustness of our cooling needs. District cooling network can achieve those benefits only if they are design and operated properly. One of the most direct ways of improving cooling flexibility is using thermal energy storage (TES). TES can provide both improvements in the efficiency of operation and cooling network robustness. To best utilize TES, a better understanding of the role operation and location of the asset within the network is needed. We build models for all the components of the network to better understand the role of TES location and design an optimization formulation to identify how to best locate it and operate it. The optimization formulation allows us to identify the best operation and location of TES during both open loop and a closed loop scenario. Additional intuition of what drives the storage allocation mechanism is then identified through the use of location analysis techniques.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mechanical Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Andujar Lugo, Frank

Contributors dc:contributor

• Alleyne, Andrew

• Control Co-design
• Thermal Cooling Networks
• Thermal Energy Storage

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Frank Andujar Lugo

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124147

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F124147